A lot of people (mostly publishers) have been asking me: “what have you been reading lately?” And so I have to tell the truth: I have been reading an awful lot of fiction. And I have been enjoying it. But now I have burned my way through my stack of summer stories and am starting to settle down with some non-fiction. Before I forget about the good (and not so good) times I had in the land of make-believe these past few months, I wanted to bring this round-up of four novels I read recently (and one book of Lists, too. I am pretending that counts as a novel idea). So, in no particular order, here it is:
Books I have read:
| 1. Lowboy by Richard Wray. This book chronicles the adventure of the titular teenaged boy, who just so happens to be schizophrenic. He escapes from his mother and psychiatric ward into the New York City underground where various shenanigans ensue. Meanwhile his mother and a Missing Persons detective with delusions of self-importance desperately search for him. This was a frustrating read; Wray’s solution to the problem of writing a psychologically distressed character is to make them frustratingly opaque, which denies readers the opportunity to identify with the protagonist’s struggles. I also found the setting, which Wray made an integral part of his story to be vague and poorly described. New York City is one of the easiest places to make come alive for a reader, if not from their own experience than at least from countless books, movies and even pieces of music. However, Wray creates a flat, generic metropolis that felt like it could be just about anywhere in the States or abroad. An eminently skippable read. | |
| 2. Bill Cotter’s Fever Chart, on the other hand, was a much more engaging piece of literature, covering similar territory. His protagonist, Jerome Coe is a troubled young man who leaves behind the mental hospital he occasionally finds himself in to take an exciting romp through the same New Orleans that played so centrally in John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces. While Ignatius Reilly and Jerome would probably ignore each other if they passed on Bourbon Street, there is little doubt that they inhabit the same city, a baroque mess of a place, inhabited almost entirely by strange grotesques. Coe’s misadventures make for a lively, engaging read, that is funny as well as poignant. In a series of flashbacks, Cotter allows us cunning insight into the mind of Jerome Coe and the circumstances that led him to the mental hospital. A fun, engaging read that will satisfy an one left wanting more of New Orleans after encountering Confederacy. | |
| 3. In a completely different vein we find That Summertime Sound by Matthew Spektor, a book that is both engaging and frustrating. The book is about one wistful summer spent in Columbus, Ohio by a group of Bohemian college students in the 80s. Columbus is a vividly-realized setting, one that Spektor clearly has great affinity for. What was frustrating was Spektor’s protagonist, a distractingly un-named youth with Lester Bangs’ taste in music. The choice of leaving a character nameless, especially a character who narrates the story from the first person is a gambit that can work if done properly, especially if the author does not draw attention to the fact. This tactic is generally employed in books where the narrator is supposed to be an everyman of some sort, so that anyone who reads the book is free to find themselves at the center of the story. However, Spektor’s protagonist is incredibly idiosyncratic, a tortured academic from California with an obsession with primitivist Rock ‘n’ roll and a cornucopia of snotty and Bohemian tics that make him particularly unrelatable. But his namelessness is not overtly obnoxious until Spektor draws attention to it by pulling one of the laziest authorial tricks imaginable, ending a chapter with “My name is…” This makes it look like Spektor was unable to come up with a satisfactory name for the character rather than intentionally trying to make him an avatar for his readers. Also aggravating is the book’s fixation on, and lack of recognition for, Lester Bangs’ fairly unique obsession with a certain type of noisy, troglodytic rock music (that’s what Bangs called it, and that’s what Spektor calls it, and they might be the only two who use that term, making it a mild form of plagiarism rather than tribute, I believe). Yeah, these are mild frustrations, but the humdrum summer exploits of a bunch of listless youths in Columbus did little to distract from these faults. Despite his impeccable sense of setting, Spektor’s novel gets lost in juvenile nihilism that detracts from the quality of his prose. | |
| 4. Coming back to the positive side of things (notice how I set that up?), Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked is a much higher-caliber novel about music obsessives and growing pains. Though his characters’ are dealing with middle age and its difficulties rather than grappling with becoming adults, they still feel stuck in the same ruts that plagued them when they were young. Duncan is a professor at a small British College who spends most of his time obsessing over obscure American singer-songwriter Tucker Crowe, who mysteriously retired from music and public life twenty years prior to the beginning of the story. Duncan is quite a good deal like Rob Gordon from High Fidelity, ten years down the road and minus the important life lessons Gordon’s absorbed by the end of his story. His mostly platonic life partner Annie is frustrated that her life has come to so little, childless and having spent far too much time obsessing over musical minutiae with a partner she finds leaving her unsatisfied. Their lives are irrevocably unsettled with the unexpected arrival of a new release of the acoustic demos of Crowe’s classic album, Juliet. The story explores the difficulties of adulthood and obsession with painful honesty, coming to conclusions that are satisfying without being pandering and without resorting to nihilism. Hornby is still on top of his game, even though he and Rob Gordon have had to grow up a bit over the years. | |
| 5. The Onion and its sister institution (or maybe daughter? I dunno, they’re definitely related), the AV Club, have always put out the best kind of coffee table books. That is, they make the kind you both want to show off, and actually want to read. The AV Club’s Inventory is no exception. Lovingly compiled by the AV Club’s staff as well as some special guest contributors, the book consists of over 100 lists of various oddly specific pop culture, ranging from songs to albums to books to DVD Commentators. This is the kind of book that, after ten minutes of reading, makes you want to spring from your seat to compile a play list, watch a movie or even read a different book. Of course, you eventually return to the deliciously funny and insightful lists, experiencing the joy of casual reading at it’s finest. For those with coffee tables and pop culture addictions, this book is a must have. |
I really enjoyed this list. So far, one of the best pieces I’ve read on this site.